Midwinter of the Spirit (17 page)

The Rev. Charlie Headland was chuckling softly in her head.
More like MI5…

Too late to turn around and creep out. Sophie – grey suit, pearls, neat white bun, half-glasses on a chain – stood in the adjacent doorway.

‘Merrily, good morning. Did you see a few specks of snow? I’m convinced I saw snow. Heavens, come up.’

‘Do I have to sign in? Maybe pass through a detector?’

Sophie smiled wryly. ‘Michael’s specific instructions. In one respect I suppose it’s rather elegant.’

‘Sophie, it looks like the entrance to a bloody chapel of rest.’

‘Oh.’ Sophie looked put out. She
was
the Bishop’s person, whoever the current bishop happened to be.

The new arrival on the office desk was an Apple Mac and a printer, and something Merrily took to be a scanner.

‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘All I know how to do on one of these is type.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Sophie said, a little cool now. ‘I’m your secretary as well, for a while. Michael wants me to open a Deliverance database: filing and categorizing the various cases, and giving area breakdowns. He also wants me to arrange a meeting with the Director of Social Services, the Chief Executive of the Health Authority, charities like MIND – and also the police.’

Merrily flopped down behind the desk. ‘What?’

‘And you’re to have an e-mail address, possibly a website.’

She looked into the blank computer screen as though it were a crystal ball, conjuring up Huw Owen’s tired, rugged face.
I don’t want stuff letting in. A lot of bad energy’s crowding the portals. I want to keep all the doors locked and the chains up…

Her new secretary stood by the window, hands linked demurely at the waist of her tweed skirt.

‘Look… Sophie,’ Merrily moistened her wind-roughened lips, ‘the thing about Deliverance, it needs to be low-profile. I wouldn’t go as far as to use the word “clandestine”, but there’s a danger of attracting time-wasters and fanatics and loonies and… other undesirable elements. The Bishop doesn’t seem to have grasped this basic point.’

‘Deliverance is getting a high priority, Merrily.’ Sophie slipped into the visitor’s chair. ‘Look… I really wouldn’t worry about this. Michael’s a very young man to be a bishop, and he perhaps feels he’s been put in place to make an impression, help push the Church firmly into the twenty-first century. He’s also a very clever man, with an impeccable pedigree which he tends to underplay. Father and an uncle were both bishops… father-in-law’s the Dean of Gloucester. Michael feels that if people are aware of the amount of work undertaken by the Deliverance ministry, they may be more inclined towards what you might call spiritual preventative medicine.’

‘You mean what we used to call “Going to Church”?’

Sophie smiled wryly.

‘I know,’ Merrily said wearily. ‘It all makes a kind of sense. I just wish there was less… bollocks.’

‘I don’t doubt that you’ll cope, Merrily. You’ll find the details of the Dorstone haunting on your computer, if you click on the desktop file marked
Memo
. I shall be next door if you want me.’

‘Thanks.’ Merrily shed her coat and switched on the computer.

And then closed the door and picked up the phone and rang Eileen Cullen at home.

‘Timed it well, Merrily. Come off shift, whizz round Tesco, home to bed.’ Away from the ward, Cullen’s voice sounded softer. ‘How are you now?’

‘Bit confused.’

‘Ah-ha. Well… what can I tell you? There’s a palpable sense of relief on the ward. We laid him out – he made the scariest corpse I ever handled – then we fumigated the side ward. Too much to expect that he’d take his smell down to the mortuary with him.’

Almost immediately, Denzil’s reptilian odour was in her head. Merrily stifled a cough.

‘Oh, and later in the morning,’ Eileen Cullen said, ‘I’m told that the old man came in and said a prayer or two.’

‘Old man?’ Merrily tingled.

‘I don’t even know his name, but his collar was the right way round so nobody questions it.’

‘His name is Dobbs,’ Merrily said.

‘Aye, that’s the feller, I suppose.’

‘He already knew about Denzil. Didn’t he?’

‘He must’ve. Though how he’d have found out the man was dead, I don’t know. We’ve hardly got the time to put out a general bulletin to the clergy.’

‘OK, look, let’s not keep walking around each other – I’ll explain. Canon Dobbs is the Diocesan Exorcist. I’m the one being set up to take over from him. He doesn’t want to go, and he certainly doesn’t want to be replaced by a woman. I’m coming round to thinking he set me up with Denzil last night to give me a taste of just how nasty and squalid the job could be.
And
why it’s not a suitable job for a woman.’

After a moment Cullen said, ‘That wasn’t very nice of him then, was it?’

‘Not awfully. So I’d appreciate just… knowing. Like, anything you can remember. Entirely off the record, Eileen.’

‘Aye,’ said Cullen, ‘you get surgeons like that. They love to leave you holding the shit end of the stick. All right, I’ll tell you what I know. He
did
know Denzil Joy. Whether this was from Denzil’s life outside of hospital I wouldn’t know. Probably. But he came in once – I didn’t see this, I wasn’t there, but Protheroe was – and they had to ask him to leave. Denzil’s spitting at him, coming out with all kinds of foul stuff you don’t want to be hearing from a sickbed, and it carried on that way after the priest was well out of the building. It’s why we put him in solitary the past two times. Though obviously his wife lived to regret that.’

‘Did anyone ask Dobbs about the incident?’

‘Oh, he wouldn’t talk to the likes of us – except very briefly to Protheroe. He said to let him know if we had any further trouble with Mr Joy. So, naturally, the other night, after the business with the wife, Protheroe’s screaming, “Call the priest, call the priest, the man’s possessed with evil.” ’

‘And you called him?’

‘I called the number she gave me and a woman answered, and I told her what it was about and she said to hang on, and then she came back and said to call the Reverend Watkins. Does that solve your problem?’

‘Do you remember the phone number you rang for Dobbs?’

‘Oh, I probably wrote it down and threw it away. Protheroe probably keeps it in a gold locket around her neck.’

‘Well, thanks. You’ve been very helpful.’

‘Aye.’ A pause. ‘How’re you feeling yourself, Merrily? Like, did he do anything to you?’

‘I… maybe.’

‘I don’t want to worry you,’ Cullen said, ‘but they say it comes back sometimes. Like the ache you get with the shingles, you know?’

‘I’ve never had shingles.’

‘Pray you never do,’ Cullen said. ‘Seems daft saying this to a priest, but if you ever want a chat about anything, you’ve got the number.’

‘Thanks,’ Merrily said. ‘Thanks.’

She clicked on
Memo
.

STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL

Mrs Susan Thorpe, proprietor, the Glades Residential Home
,

Hardwicke (between Dorstone and Hay-on-Wye) requests a

discreet meeting with regard to unexplained occurrences
.

Sophie’s head came round the door just then, as if she’d heard the click of the mouse. ‘Would you like me to call her for you? Make an appointment?’

‘Just leave the number on the desk. Sophie, could you give me another bit of information?’

‘It’s what I’m here for, Merrily.’

‘Could you tell me exactly where in the Close Canon Dobbs lives?’

Sophie removed her half-glasses. ‘Ho-hum,’ she said.

‘The Bishop’s specific instructions are to keep Dobbs and me well apart, right?’

‘Michael doesn’t discuss Canon Dobbs. Perhaps you could try the telephone directory?’

‘Of which you know he’s ex-.’

Sophie sighed. ‘He moved out of the canonry when his wife died. He lives in a little terraced house in Gwynne Street.’

‘That’s…?’

‘Less than fifty yards from where I sit – just down from the Christian bookshop. And I didn’t tell you that.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I suppose you had to get this over at some stage.’ Sophie refixed her glasses. ‘Don’t forget your haunting, will you?’

Frost-blackened plants dripped down the sides of a hanging basket next to the door. The green door needed painting. Paint was peeling from the wooden window ledge; the wood was rotting. The house itself rather let Gwynne Street down.

The street was narrow, almost like an alley, following the perimeter wall of the Bishop’s Palace, and sloping downhill towards the river. The house was one of the lower ones, before they gave way to warehouses and garages near the banks of the Wye.

There was no bell, no knocker. Merrily banged on the door with a fist, which hurt and brought more paint flying off.

There was no answer. She peered in at the window. The curtains were drawn against her. She looked around in frustration. There was no sign of another way in. Above her, the sky was tight and dark-flecked like stretched goatskin.

‘Hello, Merrily. All right, luv?’

‘I don’t really know.’

‘Oh.’ Silence on the line as Huw Owen mulled this over. ‘That sounds like you took on the job. I
thought
you wouldn’t back out.’

‘I was actually about to turn it down.’ Merrily lit a cigarette, looking out of the window into the Bishop’s Palace yard. ‘Then a case happened.’

‘Just happened, eh?’ Huw said. ‘Just like that. Well, what’s done’s done, in’t it? How can I help?’

‘I don’t suppose any of the others’ve called. Charlie? Clive?’

‘Never off, lass. “Do excuse me bothering you again, Huw, but I have a teensy problem, and I’m not entirely sure if it’s a
weeper
or a
breather
.” ’

Merrily blew an accidental smoke-ring. ‘So I’m the first to come crying to the headmaster.’

‘I always liked you the best, anyroad, luv. Charlie and Clive’ll fall on their arses sooner or later, but they won’t tell
me
.’

She started to laugh, picturing him sitting placidly in his isolated, Brontë-esque rectory, like some ungroomed old wolfhound.

‘Let’s hear it then, lass.’

She told him about Denzil Joy. She told it simply and concisely. She missed out nothing she thought might be important.
Scritchscratch
. And then the Dobbs link. It took over fifteen minutes, and it brought everything back, and she felt unclean again.

‘My,’ Huw said, ‘that’s a foxy one, in’t it?’

‘What d’you think?’

‘Could be a few things. Could be just a very nasty little man. Or it could be a
carrier
.’

‘A carrier. Did you tell us about carriers?’

‘Happen I forgot.’

‘Meaning you deliberately forgot. Would
carriers
be the people who pick up
hitchhikers
?’

‘You’re not daft, Merrily. I said that, din’t I? Provable carriers are… not that common. And not easy to diagnose. And they can lead to a lot of hysteria of the fundamentalist type. You know, if one bloke’s got it, it must be contagious? And then you get these dubious mass-exorcisms, everybody rolling around and clutching their guts.’

‘Just one man,’ Merrily said, ‘so far.’

‘That’s good to know. Well, a carrier is usually a nasty person who attracts more nastiness to him – like iron filings to a magnet. Usually there’s a bit of a sexual kink. An overly powerful sex-drive and probably not bright. Not a lot up top, too much down below.’

‘Anything I need to do now he’s gone?’

‘To make sure he don’t come back? Sounds like Mr Dobbs has done it. Not going quietly into that good night, is he?’

‘Clearly not.’

‘Might not work, mind. That’s the big irony with Deliverance – half the time it don’t work. But in somewhere like a hospital it’ll fade or get consumed by all the rest of the pervading anguish. You could happen do a protection on yourself periodically. Oh, and leave off sex for a week.’

‘Gosh, Huw, that’s going to be a tall order.’

‘Oh dear,’ Huw said. ‘So you’re still on your own, eh? What a bloody waste. God hates waste.’

Before lunch, Merrily made an appointment to meet Mrs Susan Thorpe at the Glades Residential Home at eleven o’clock the following morning. There must have been somebody in the room who didn’t know about this issue, because Mrs Thorpe kept addressing her as if she were Rentokil coming to deal with an infestation of woodworm.

Sophie was meeting a friend for lunch at the Green Dragon. Merrily decided to see what was on offer at the café inside All Saints Church: a fairly ingenious idea for getting bums on pews or at least
close
to pews.

But first –
Sod it, I’m not walking away from this
– she slipped round the wall and back into Gwynne Street.

There was a weak, cream-coloured sun now over Broad Street, but Gwynne Street was still in shadow. The only point of light was in the middle of Dobbs’s flaking green door.

It turned out to be a slender white envelope trapped by a corner in the letterbox flap. As she raised a fist to knock on the door and wondered if she ought to push the envelope through, she saw the name typed on the front:

Mrs M Watkins

She caught a movement at an upstairs window and glanced up, saw a curtain quiver. He was there! The old bastard had been in the whole time. He’d watched her standing here knocking more paint from his door.

And now he’d left her a letter.

The street was deserted: no cars, no people, no voices. She felt like smashing Dobbs’s window. Instead she snatched the envelope out of the box and walked away and didn’t look back.

She walked quickly out of Gwynne Street, past the Christian bookshop and the Tourist Information Shop, and round the corner into King Street, where she stood at the kerb and tore open the envelope. She hoped it was a threat, something abusive.